All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.

The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.

Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully; but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.